


broken bones always seem to mend

by alchemystique



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4540473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't talk about it. He keeps waiting for her to bring it up, but she never does. (Beth and Daryl in Alexandria, finally getting some time to figure out what the hell is going on between them) non-canon compliant</p>
            </blockquote>





	broken bones always seem to mend

**Author's Note:**

> an: in which i ignore canon once again because i will die shipping beth and daryl and i will never be over ‘coda’ and all the things that could have been. just a glimpse into daryl and beth in alexandria. title from “the devil’s tears” by angus & julia stone.

There’d been one time, Daryl remembers, right before the turn, where he and Merle had made a run up to some suburbia nightmare neighborhood - the kind where kids play in the streets and upstanding citizens mowed their lawn every Sunday, where the women would sit outside on their porches with sweet tea, gossiping about the fifth grade teacher they’d heard used to dance down in the shady part of town. It’d been dark, summertime, the night bleeding into the dark hours past midnight, and some dumbass kid who’d run into Merle at some shitty bar the night before had told them to come on up - he was throwin’ a party and he wanted some of the good shit.

Merle didn’t tell him what kinda shit he had, but the kid was dumb as rocks with his nice expensive education and Merle was sure he could get this kid to buy anything he thought would fuck him and his stupid friends up.

He’d felt the houses creepin’ in on him, felt the hair at the back of his neck stand on end as they rode on through the clean, well lit streets to the house on a cul de sac damn near shakin’ off it’s hinges with the crappy electronic shit poundin’ away inside. 

But it was summer, parents all away on some cruise, or whatever shit rich folks did in the summer, and Merle had invited himself right in.

Daryl never felt more uncomfortable in his life, with a horde of college girls eyein’ him like he was candy, and a bunch more dumb college boys starin’ at him like they were wonderin’ if they could take him in a fight. He’d hated it, spent his whole time there waitin’ for Merle to show up beside the door where he’d stationed himself, couldn’t wait to leave. The walls curled in on him and the lines of picture frames and stares of happy families felt oppressive and stuffy. Fake as all the rest of the world, only here they wrapped it in a nice pretty bow to hide themselves from the world.

He stays on the porch in Alexandria, shrugs his shoulders when Rick reminds him there’s a room at the top of the stairs with his name on it. 

She finds him there. And it’s not the only reason he’d stayed out, away from the creepin’ walls and the lies of safety and security - but it factored. 

She smiles as she curls into the space left in his little corner, and he hadn’t left the space on purpose, but it’s nice. Real nice.

He wonders if they’ll talk about it, now. Now that they have a moment to take a deep breath, now that they’ve got some time. It won’t be much - Daryl isn’t sure how long these high walls will hold, when the place is brimming in the same idiots who thought walls were all it took to keep them safe. Isn’t sure these people won’t scare and kick them out. 

For now though, he’s glad his family has a moment to rest. Even if it’s just a moment.

“I forgot what it’s like, you know? How many sounds a workin’ house makes.”  


They ain’t gonna talk about it, then. 

He grunts in response, never quite sure what to do with her when she goes for small talk. Hell, any talk, really. She runs most conversations, always has, and sometimes he’ll go along for the ride with her. 

“You think these people know what they’re doin’ here?”  


He can tell by the way she phrases the question she don’t think they are. “They’re soft. Ain’t got a lick ‘a sense, bringing people in like they do.”

“That’s what I told Deanna.” Her shoulder presses into his, and it’s too dark out to see her expression. “She didn’t like that, much.”  


Her hair is soft against his arm, loose around her face for once, and he can’t help wonderin’ if she kept the braid along the side of her face. Gets the urge to reach around her and check. He doesn’t, though, isn’t sure where he stands with her. They haven’t talked about it.

The way her fingers slide along his arm makes him wish they had. They slide over muscle and through short hair that stands on end at her touch, until she links her hand in his, the pads of her fingertips curling around his palm. 

“Should be sleepin’,” he tells her, as a warning or a reminder or somethin’ - he ain’t quite sure what. All he knows is this is the closest he’s felt to comfortable since he stepped through that gate, and he ain’t sure it’s a good thing.  


“Too much noise,” she tells him, and he can see she’s turned her face to his, but all he can see is the glassy glint of her eyes against the shadows on the porch. “Fridge hums, and the wind creeks all weird in the windows. The pipes groan. I forgot.”  


“Figured you’d be more used to it. After...”   


She shifts beside him, going still. So it ain’t that she’s not used to the noises. 

Daryl has to fight the urge to curl his arm around her, pull her into him and never let go. After a while, she shifts her legs, curling them towards him - her knee presses against his thigh and she moves their linked hands further up into his lap. 

“I remember me and Maggie used to play at campin’, sometimes. Wasn’t real campin’, we’d drag every pillow and blanket in the house out onto the porch and Daddy’d let us light candles, and we’d lay out and pretend we were stargazin’. We’d sing, sometimes, and Daddy’d sit by the door and listen, even though we told him not to. Told him we were havin’ girl time. or something. He’d go to sleep, though, and we’d talk about school and boys and stupid shit,” he snorts at her language, doesn’t mention the way her body has tilted into his. “It used to be such a treat, ya know? Sleepin’ out there with the grass whistlin’ in the wind and the moon lightin’ the night.”  


“Ain’t gonna build a blanket fort with you, Greene,” he says, a bit of mocking in his voice, and she sighs. Presses her cheek into his shoulder, hitches her leg up so it’s pressing more firmly against her thigh.   


“This is okay, though,” she tells him, and he squeezes the fingers locked in his.   


They stay silent, a while, listening to the chirp of cicadas, the breeze in the trees, the sounds of households going silent as the neighborhood heads to sleep. It’s a lie, this blanket of security they’ve all wrapped themselves in, and he wants to shout in the streets, rail at them all, wake them from they’re comfortable sleep and tell them they’re all as good as dead. 

Her breathing evens out against his shoulder, her hand going slack in his, and he wonders at it - at the fact that the only time he doesn’t see her keyed up and hyperaware is when she’s curled up against him like this. Even with Maggie and Rick and Carl and Michonne at her back she’s always watching, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. ‘Cept with him. 

“I hate it here,” she tells him, long after he’d thought she was asleep. “Wish we could find a place just us.” He doesn’t dare ask her to elaborate - can’t quite hide the tremor in his hands when he thinks of what ‘just us’ means. He knows she’s grateful to have her family back, just as much as he is, but... but it’d been simpler, just the two of them. It’d felt easy. Right.  


Right up until he’d lost her, right up until he’d needed help to get her back. They all need each other, and no matter how much he misses the easiness of having it be just the two of them, he knows he wouldn’t trade the security of the group at their back.

“Gonna head out tomorrow, scope the place out. Maybe look for some places to set snares.”  


She hums against him. 

“Saw another bow, in the armory. ‘f ya wanna come.”  


“Who else is goin’?”  


He feels his ears burn as she tilts her head up to look at him. They’ve been out here long enough that the moon has slunk across the sky, and her face is in sharp relief against the moonlight, now, her wide eyes catching his gaze. 

“Jus’ me,” he tells her. Lets her take that for what it means. They ain’t seen too many Walkers the last few days, but takin’ her outside the walls just the two of them... she’s gotta know what it means.  


“Been a while since I held a bow,” she tells him as she blinks owlishly, and he ain’t completely sure what takes hold of him as he squirrels his fingers from her grasp and curls his arm around her shoulders, tugging her into him just a bit. Her breasts press into his side, and she shuffles a bit before grunting in annoyance at the uncomfortable position, tossing her knee easily over his leg.   


“Won’t go too far. Let you get your bearings.”  


She nods like that’s all there is to it, and he’s thankful she doesn’t mention the way his heart is beating double time against his chest. 

They stay that way, his heart thundering in his chest and her lips just a hairs breadth from his neck, “Should get some rest,” she finally says, breath warm against his throat, his fingers, with minds of their own, making swirling patterns along her ribcage. He hums, low in his throat, when neither of them make a move to leave. 

“Here’s okay,” he tells her, finally, unintentionally mimicking her earlier statement, and she hums against him, curling more firmly into his side.  


He doesn’t remember his eyes slipping closed - just remembers the sound of her breath against him, the feel of her pressed tight and close and warm, his fingers in her hair and the moon shining bright against the knee tucked in his lap.

\------

He ignores Michonne’s raised eyebrow all through breakfast, trying to fight down the redness of his ears every time he remembers jerking awake when she’d kicked at his boot, his arm still firm around Beth and her hair in his face, the hand curled delicately around his knee and the raging hard on tucked against the leg thrown across him. 

Beth doesn’t seem to notice, or care, really, that anyone had seen them, and - 

And they still haven’t talked about it, but he’s beginning to think maybe they don’t have to.

Rick side eyes him when he tells the man they’re going outside the walls -they haven’t even been here a week but Daryl’s goin’ stir crazy, and usually he’d just go alone but...

“You got anything specific in mind you gotta do?” Michonne asks, a tilt to her head that Daryl don’t appreciate one bit, not with Maggie and Glenn on his right and Beth, oblivious on his left as she feeds Judith little slices of canned pears.  


“Daryl says there’s another bow in the armory, says it’s just my size.” Michonne’s eyes gleam at this unexpected prize.  


“Yeah, you said you’d been learning with his, before.” Daryl scowls, fights the urge to kick out at her under the table. 

“Can’t really handle it without Daryl’s help. But it’s better to have my own, anyway.”  


“Two’s always better than one,” Michonne agrees solemnly, and Daryl coughs, ignoring the confused stare Rick is shooting between them, like he knows there’s a conversation goin’ on he’s not privy to.   


Glenn butts in, then. “Can’t believe you let Beth touch your bow, Daryl. It’s been years and I’ve never seen you let another soul lay a hand on that thing.”   


“She must handle it real nice,” Michonne mutters into her bowl, and Beth coughs beside Daryl, the same moment Rick seems to get the gist of Michonne’s loaded comments.  


“Gotta take a piss,” Daryl says, shooting Michonne one last ornery look as he pushes away from the table, feeling eyes on him as he goes.   


He’s halfway up the stairs when he hears Beth’s voice filtering up. “Shouldn’t tease him like that,” she’s saying, her words almost too quiet to hear, and Michonne’s laugh echoes up the stairwell. 

“I was teasing _you_ too,” she tells Beth, and he imagines the apples of her cheeks going red.  


“What am I missin’ here?” comes Maggie’s voice, and Daryl practically leaps up the rest of the stairs, shakin’ his head and fighting down the feelin’ blooming in his chest. It ain’t so bad, really, gettin’ caught out like that, even if he ain’t quite sure what it is he’d been caught doin’. It ain’t so bad, when all he’s gettin’ from it is some gentle ribbing from a woman who could slice him clean in two and not break a sweat.

“ - handling his _what_?” comes Maggie’s voice, louder now, and Daryl lets the bathroom door shut behind him.  


\------

The bow is just her size, and Daryl gives a pleased hum, low in his throat, when she hits the knot in the tree on her fourth shot. She’s got a giddy little grin going, and the urge that washes over him to reel her in and kiss her silly doesn’t go quite unnoticed when she catches his gaze. 

He wants to talk about it. All the things they haven’t quite said, all the secrets he’s kept close just for her ears - it’s crazy, really, because Daryl ain’t never been one for words and especially not words about feelin’s. 

He keeps it to himself, lets her follow the trail he’d scoped out earlier, talks her through it when they finally find the rabbit she’s been tracking half the morning. Her hair is pulled up, and his eyes can’t help the way they track the swish of the dangling braid tucked into the ponytail as she lines up her sight. She looks _right_ , out here, amidst the trees and the encroaching forest, looks right with the bow in her arms and the trickle of sweat running down her neck. 

She gets the rabbit through the eye, swirls to grin at him, all blinding white teeth and bright eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah. Shoot another one and I might not call it dumb luck.”  


She sticks her tongue out at him like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like he ain’t some dirty scary redneck out for blood, and he shakes his head, lets his hair fall in his eyes so he doesn’t have to hold her gaze.

She nabs three more before they decide to head back, stabs a Walker stumbling through the trees half a mile away from the wall, and tucks her hand into his without a word, hips swaying next to his, shoulders bumping, hair whipping out against his arms. 

She hands the bow back at the gates reluctantly, and Daryl doesn’t do much more than scowl at the man eyein’ Daryls own crossbow before he lets them be. 

When they sit down for dinner that night, the group all praising Beth’s first haul, she ducks her head and smiles, and gets Michonne in the nose with a boiled carrot when the other woman questions the usefulness of Daryl’s big bow. 

\------

It ain’t home - not by a long shot - and there are a number of things happening with the residents of Alexandria that Daryl knows are gonna have to be dealt with - but for now he’ll wait out the storm. 

They talk about it.

In fits and starts, they talk about Grady, about the Claimers, about Terminus and all the things in between. Daryl tells her about restless nights out on the road, about the things he’s seen Rick do that worry him, about how sometimes the only way he’d managed to take another step was the thought of her out there, somewhere. He tells her about the book hidden away in the bottom of his pack, the one he’s terrified to open because maybe he’s too broken by now to fix it.

She tells him about waking up without him, about trying to figure those Grady assholes, about her failed escape.

She pulls him into the bedroom that’s supposed to be his, curls up in his arms like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Tells him she knows he was never broken, tells him she gets it now. Presses her hand against his heart and tells him she knows there’s good people because he’s one of em. 

He doesn’t fight her on it, and that’s a start, at least. 

It’s a real good start.


End file.
